Diaspora/Website

To do this, all you need to do is to type your message – whatever you want to say to them, perhaps “This is my first post in Diaspora!” – and press the <span class="click">Share</span> button. And you’ve shared a message with your contacts!

OK, so what are those buttons all about?

This button is how you select who will be able to read your post. It is set to “All aspects” by default: that is, everyone you have added to one of your aspects will be able to read the message, but no one else will be. In the simple message you just sent, because you wanted it visible just to your followers and the default is “All aspects,” there was no need to change any settings before sharing your message.

At the right-hand end of the text field is a camera icon that lets you upload photos to your message. You can either click on it and select some pictures from your computer, or drag the images straight from a folder to the button.

Locator

Next to the camera is a “pin” icon which activates the locator feature. This enables you to add your location to posts. Click it and it will ask you whether you’re happy for it to determine your location using OpenStreetMap, and if you allow this it will add your location to your post as a footnote.

You can edit this location by clicking on the text once it appears under the publisher window.

The location provided may be very exact, so you might want to edit out the specific address information and just give the town or region you’re in. It’s up to you!

The icon next to your connected services looks like a spanner. Clicking this will let you configure your connections with other social networks and services.

Next to the “compose” button at the top left is the last button, with a magnifying glass icon – and it’s a really useful one! This allows you to see exactly what your post will look like, so you can be sure you’re happy with it before you actually post it. This can really help with correcting errors, and especially with text formatting. More on this below.

#tags

Want to include a link in your post? Just paste it into your message and it will automatically be converted to an inline link. You can also contain your link within your text by using Markdown. You can use the <span class="click">Preview</span> button to check that your links are working properly before you post your message.

Embedding

You can also paste links to media sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and others, and the video/audio file you’re linking to will become “embedded” in your post. Try it!

Note that the video/audio will only become embedded <em>after</em> you have posted your message, so you’ll have to refresh/reload the stream in order to see it. Occasionally it takes a while for the site which hosts the file you want to embed to respond with the embed information, so you might have to wait a short while and refresh the stream again.

If you have conntected your diaspora* seed to your accounts on other services, clicking on one or more of the icons for those services below the publisher means your message will appear on those networks as well.

If your message is longer than the figure allowed by the service you’re posting to, your message will appear truncated on that service, with a link to your post in diaspora*.

How about that? There’s plenty of things you can do in your posts in diaspora*.

To try it out, why not make a public announcement that you’ve just arrived in diaspora*? This is a good way to get welcomed by people in our community, and to start to make connections.

Hi everyone, I’m #newhere in diaspora*. I like #running, #literature and #rabbits.